Steve Scalise Was Shot Two Years Ago Today. Why Is The Media So Silent On The Anniversary?

Today marks the two-year anniversary of the nearly fatal shooting of Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) on a baseball field in Virginia. The shooter, who will not be named as a matter of Daily Wire company policy, was revealed to be a Bernie Sanders campaign-volunteering hard leftist who thought Republicans deserved to die for their alleged sins committed against the American people. This is not an exaggeration — it was all but made clear as an express motivation. To be sure, no one whatsoever was to blame for the shooter’s actions other than the shooter himself — human beings are discrete actors and, absent direct incitement or agitation to violence, we each possess individual culpability and bear responsibility for only our own actions.

But perhaps because the shooter was a leftist and the target was a notable Republican, the media coverage today, on the two-year anniversary, seems rather … sparse. CNN and The Hill have anniversary pieces, but a quick survey of the mainstream media landscape reveals not too many other entries. CNN’s write-up is straightforward enough:

On June 14, 2017, a man who posted online about hating conservatives and President Donald Trump fired a semi-automatic rifle and a semi-automatic handgun at Republican lawmakers, staff and coaches practicing for an upcoming charity baseball game in Alexandria, Virginia. The shooter fired at least 70 rounds before he was killed.

Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana was gravely wounded, and his determined recovery has been widely reported on, but for the four others who were struck by bullets and shrapnel, their road to recovery has been largely out of the spotlight in the years since the attack.

Scalise himself furthermore tweeted earlier today: “Two years ago, my colleagues and I were attacked while practicing for a charity baseball game, simply because we’re Republicans. Thanks to countless heroes, miracles, and prayers, I’m still here today getting to do the job I love in Congress—and play a little baseball.”

Still, fully accepting the premise of individual culpability for one’s own actions, the inescapable reality of the facts surrounding this shooting is that a deranged socialist went on a kamikaze mission to go shoot up as many Republicans as he possibly could. Against that backdrop, and surveying the relative paucity of media coverage today on the shooting’s two-year anniversary, one must naturally wonder: How differently would this anniversary be covered if the shooter had been wearing a MAGA hat and had specifically targeted not Republicans, but Democrats?

The thought experiment seems to answer itself. It goes without saying that our myopic fourth estate, which is comprised of 90+% registered Democrats, is ultimately but one of many instruments wielded by our broader bi-coastal clerisy — our supercilious ruling class that deigns to govern the misbegotten heartland yokels. Alternative history speculations are ultimately just that — speculations. And, to be sure, we can never know for sure how exactly subsequent media coverage would have transpired had the political and partisan identities of the involved actors been reversed. But we can make an educated guess that there would surely be more mainstream media coverage on the two-year anniversary of a brazen attempt to assassinate a sitting U.S. congressman if the identities had been reversed. And the fact that we can so easily make such an educated guess ought to be distressing.